Facial hair is still hanging on as something an acceptable human dude can openly rock without being shunned, but the mustache… well, the mustache is a bit trickier.
It takes a certain sort of panache to pull off a mustache, and even then, you’re walking a pretty narrow line between masculine trend-setter and dude with a windowless van parked outside of the playground.
So, if you’re going to grow a stache, make sure it’s not one of these eight mustache styles that will get you swiped left faster than you can blink an eye.
The Dirt Stache
As seen on our good friend Joe Dirt here, the dirt stache can either be accompanied by other dirty patches of hair, or it can exist all by its lonesome, dirtying the lip and the soul of the unfortunate man who tries to make it work.
Look, most women are going to see this and immediately think that you live in a trailer with your cousin Brandine, where you raise a litter of your mutant kin. Either that, or they’ll just think “Eeeeewwww!” Not good, man. Not good at all.
A Bad Handlebar
The handlebar is tough for anyone to pull off. You pretty much have to tend to it at all times. It isn’t something you can do half-heartedly. The fancy handlebar, better known as “the Rollie Fingers” isn’t impossible to pull off. But if you’re not fully committed to the look, it’s going to look horrific and any girl worth her salt will see how you treat your mustache as a warning sign to how you live the rest of your life.
So if you’re a lazy guy, I’m just saying, this won’t end well for you.
The Barely There Mustache
Seen on our friend, Michael Cera, this mustache is for the man who can’t grow one, but tries anyway, which is just pitiful. And that’s exactly how it comes across to any woman thinking about swiping right.
It immediately makes you look like you’re fifteen years old, which, believe it or not, is not exactly the most attractive thing to the ladies. No one wants to get down in your childhood bedroom surrounded by Iron Man posters on the walls, and in a tiny single bed with a GI Joe bedspread or Pokemon or Lena Dunham or whatever it is kids are into these days. If you can’t grow it, don’t. It’s that simple.
The 70’s Stache
“Hey, I can’t meet this dude who looks like he just crawled out of 1976 and will probably give some sort of disease.” Enough said.
The Wooderson
Alright, alright, alright…
Look, there’s a reason why Wooderson was trolling for high school chicks back in the day, and it wasn’t just because he gets older while they stay the same age. It’s also because no adult woman would have anything to do with a dude who willingly rocks the Wooderson mustache.
It’s not necessarily the mustache itself which is the problem, but what it says about its owner. It’s kind of every bad mustache rolled into one giant terrible stache, the sort of mustache a man wears who goes around to 15 year old girls and tells them that his name is Russ and he drives a Mustang and so all his friends call him The Rustang.
This won’t just get you rejected, it will get you laughed at.
The Borat
Very nice? Uh… no.
Unfortunately for you, we live in a post-Borat world, which means that this classic stache won’t make you look manly and rugged like classic Tom Selleck, but instead, well… like Borat.
And look, I could get into all the ways this is bad, but you’ve seen the movie, so let’s just leave it at that and move on.
The John Waters
At best – at best – you’ll look like a dude who lives with his grandma and collects antique dolls. At worst… well, you don’t really wanna know what you look like to people.
This is purely a kitsch mustache, and while that might fit your hipster lifestyle, it will attract an even sadder brand of hipster deviant than the fancy handlebar. Like, you’ll be attending cat weddings kind of sad.
The Creeper Stache
Look, this one is tough. That’s because any mustache can quickly morph into a creeper stache on the wrong face. Mustaches are a dangerous game, friends.
There is a certain style though that seems to lend itself to automatic creeperdom in the eyes of most people, and I think ol’ Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite has the sort of mustache I’m talking about.
Now, I’m not calling Pedro a creeper, but just look at him man. More importantly, look at that mustache. Is that the mustache of a man you’d feel comfortable sitting at a bar alone with? Now imagine a woman trying to decide which direction she should swipe. And then admit to yourself that there is no decision to be made. That mustache makes it for her.